I know that others want desperately me to be “better”. They want me to be happy and carefree and back to the Melanie they knew before child loss.
And not just for their sake, for mine too.
It’s hard to watch someone you care about in pain.
But my reality has been forever changed.
Read the rest here: Love Doesn’t End
An exchange with a Facebook friend got me thinking.
How much of my struggle in life is a result of ignoring my own limits?
How much pain do I inflict on myself because I won’t admit I need help? Why do I insist on living to the edge of endurance and emotional capacity?
Why, why, why do I try so hard to keep up a front of invincibility?
Pride.
Pride goads me like a whip.
Pride makes me say, “yes” when I should say, “no”. Pride whispers the lie to my heart that I can be everything to everyone because I am “all that”. Pride makes me believe I am the focus of others’ attention and conversation when they probably haven’t even noticed.
Foolish woman!
When I try to do too much, I am unable to do anything well. When I spread myself too thin, I guarantee that I’ll crack under the pressure of keeping up appearances.
Truth is, I’m not fooling anyone. And I’m not serving myself or others well.
I’m learning some lessons in this Valley and one of them is to try to accept my limits. I need to be honest about how much I can and cannot do, what I can and cannot carry alone.
Admitting I am human is hardly a unique confession-it’s the plight of all who walk the earth. When I do, I invite others to walk alongside and assist me in carrying the load.
Asking for help isn’t weakness, it’s strength.
I belong to several bereaved parents online communities and this question comes up again and again-it was the first thing I asked a bereaved mom just after Dominic ran ahead to heaven:
“Will this suffocating pain remain sitting on my chest, smothering the breath and life right out of me? Will I ever be able to stop crying? Will it ALWAYS feel like this?”
The short answer is, “No, it won’t.”
For those of us who follow Jesus, we know that eternity with Him will be filled with inexpressible joy and peace. Whatever pain and sorrow we have carried down below will be swallowed up by redemption and restoration. He has promised both to collect our tears in His bottle and to wipe them away.
The longer answer is, “It depends.”
If I cling tightly to my sorrow, focus my eyes and heart only on what I have lost, then I will continue to feel overwhelmed.
How can it be otherwise?
I have lost more than I can comprehend-both what WAS and WHAT WILL BE. My son is gone, gone, gone. And that is not going to change on this earth.
I can’t play mind games and trick myself into thinking it will. My heart knows the truth and it won’t be fooled no matter how hard I try.
BUT-if I turn and face the pain, embrace it, feel it and work on healthy ways to carry it-then I can begin to breathe again.
There is no way through but through. I have to let my heart feel all the feels. Stuffing or ignoring them is not an option. They will not be ignored forever.
There’s no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.
Johnny Cash
I can choose to equip myself with tools for working through them. Counseling, journaling, learning to lament, sharing with a trusted friend are all healthy ways to process pain.
And because I believe in Jesus, the most helpful thing I can do in this Valley is look to my Shepherd. When I focus my gaze on Him, on His character and provision, my heart is strengthened.
Make no mistake-the missing and sorrow are still there-faith is not anesthesia! But there are other feelings that take up residence alongside my pain-hope and courage and grace.
I have to choose.
Am I going to work through this pain or simply be crushed by it? Will I allow my Savior to heal my heart or will I refuse His aid?
My heart is still beating either way.
God bless the inventor of Band Aids!
That little tacky plaster has soothed more fears and tears than almost any other invention in the world.
Skinned knee? Put a BandAid on it.
Bee sting? BandAid.
Tiny bump that no one can even see? Oh, sweetie, let me give you a BandAid.
Simply acknowledging pain and woundedness is so often all that is needed to encourage a heart and point it toward healing.
Read the rest here: Loving the Wounded
“On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more.
On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.” C.S. Lewis, Miracles
Bury a child and suddenly the death of Christ becomes oh, so personal. The image of Mary at the foot of the cross is too hard to bear.
Read the rest here: Remember: Why Good Friday Matters as Much as Resurrection Sunday
I mention that today is a hard day to someone who knows my story and the words fall with a loud “thud!” between us.
I don’t know whether to pick them up or not and she isn’t having anything to do with them.
So I move on to another topic. Clearly this one isn’t going anywhere.
There are lots of ways to send messages of disapproval. You can “just say NO” like kids are told to do in anti-drug and anti-bullying campaigns. You can rant and rave and argue and rail against someone or something in person and on social media.
Or you can just ignore someone when they spill what matters to them like an offering on the ground at your feet.
The opposite of love is not hate.
It’s indifference.
The opposite of support is not opposition.
It’s looking the other way.
Strangers line streets to cheer marathoners on-offering cups of water and words of affirmation.
“You can do it!” “Keep going!” “You are more than half-way there!” “Don’t give up!”
And yet many of us are running the race of our lives without a cheering section.
I get it–you are so very tired of the fact that I am so very tired. I have worn out the welcome mat to the door of your heart. It DOES get old when I bring the same baggage with me each time we talk.
Trust me, I’m working hard at unpacking it. I’m doing all I can to lighten my load and what I ask you to help me carry.
But it is a slow, slow process.
And every time I need help or encouragement and don’t get it, another brick is added to the suitcase.
You might think you are helping me learn to ignore the pain by ignoring my mention of it but I don’t have that luxury.
It’s my heart wound, not yours.
It’s my child buried, my child not here, my child gone from sight-how exactly should I ignore that? Which of your children could you put away for a lifetime and forget was ever here?
If you want to help me lighten the load,
let me unpack my pain by telling my story.
If you want me to finish the race strong,
cheer me on.
It’s easy to justify bad behavior when I am hurting.
As the saying goes, “Hurt people, hurt people”.
But if I know Jesus, I don’t get a pass. I don’t get to act ugly or pretend I don’t know better or have His Spirit to help me BE better.
Sometimes I AM ugly. Sometimes I do act badly. I am ashamed that even though I am fully aware of my own desperate need for grace and mercy I sometimes withhold it from others.
I’m also ashamed that I can be judgmental and hateful and short-tempered and short-sighted. I can exclude others and run out of patience and choose to turn away when I should be tuning in.
And I’m really, really sorry.
I’m trying to lean more fully on the grace available to me through God’s Holy Spirit. I am trying to pause so that the first thing that springs to mind doesn’t always fly out of my mouth. I am learning to wait before returning phone calls, emails and text messages.
I try to take a walk when my heart is twisted ugly so that the ugly doesn’t spill out onto others and ruin THEIR day.
I don’t get to lay aside the calling to love because I’ve laid a child to rest.
I’m working hard to remember that.
Today is full of tears.
No real reason-other than the obvious one-but so many things coming together to remind me this life is hard, hard, hard.
I find on this side of burying Dominic that when two or three other stressful events pile one atop the other I crumble. Sometimes it’s other family members doing the best they can to muddle through and sometimes it’s physical pain or disappointment or the random “ya-ya” stuff of life in community with other people Whatever it is, the weight-in addition to grief-just absolutely overwhelms me.
I used to be stronger.
Or at least I thought I was stronger. But maybe the truth was the burden I was carrying wasn’t nearly as heavy as I thought it was and I just didn’t have anything to compare it to.
Now I do.
And I am oh, so weary! I want to curl up in a ball and wish for it all to be over. I want to hide in a hole and hope the world passes me by. I want to wait out my years unnoticed and unchallenged and pass peacefully to eternal rest and the joyful fullness of what has been promised.
Not an option.
So I hang in and hold on. I cling to hope and I climb the mountain. I crawl when I can’t walk. I beg for mercy when my mind grows dark and all I see is the long years stretching before me like a prison sentence.
And I cry.
I let the tears roll down my cheeks and fall into the corners of my mouth. I taste their salty sweetness and let them remind me that Dominic matters. That even when other folks have forgotten and moved on, he’s still part of my every day. My heart is still in pieces. My family circle has been torn apart.
Some days I can push it down and forget a little. But today I can’t.
It’s just plain hard.
You know, I don’t expect those outside the Body of Christ to have good theology-that’s like expecting me to be able to explain thermodynamics.
Ain’t gonna happen-it’s outside my scope of understanding and practice.
I do expect those who have spent a lifetime reading Scripture, studying Sunday School lessons and listening to sermons to know better.
But many don’t.
Read the rest here: Exploding the Myth: God Doesn’t Give You More Than You Can Handle
I have friends who have not only buried a child (some have buried more than one) but have also buried parents, siblings, in-laws and other people close to their hearts in a very short span of time.
And I am appalled when they recite the trite comments doled out by others meant to patch broken hearts and sweep the leftover pieces under the rug of social propriety.
Let me just say this: Death. Is. Awful.
Full stop. No easy change of subject or laughter allowed to make the hearing of it softer.
It should be hard.
It should make us pause.
We should stop in our tracks to acknowledge the passing of the breath of God from a person’s body.
Death is an unavoidable reminder that the world is not as God intended it to be. It’s a reminder of the cost of sin. It’s a reminder that our time is short. And it’s a reminder that we are NOT in control.
Those are very uncomfortable truths.
My hope in Christ makes those truths bearable but it does not make facing the death of those I love hurt less.
A broken heart is a perfectly natural and reasonable response to the awfulness of death and to the absence of the presence of one I love. Great grief is the price of great love.
There’s a scene in The Magician’s Nephew where a little boy named Digory meets Aslan. His mother is sick, and he wants to ask for Aslan’s help, but he’s afraid. Lewis writes:
Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great front feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. “My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.”
For those outside this great grief, it seems helpful to toss words like bandaids but it’s not.
I’m sure you mean well when you try to circumscribe my grief-to give limits to its expression and duration.
But unrealistic expectations make it more difficult to bear the burden I’m already carrying. Your words add to this weight of sorrow and pain that I cannot untie from my bent back.
Presence-often SILENT presence-is the balm for my wounded soul.
But please: Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.
~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
